Associate Professor Chris Roelfsema
Researcher biography
Research interest: Monitoring ecosystem health of coral reefs and seagrass habitats, integrating field and remote sensing image datasets, and the developing applied cost-effective mapping and monitoring approaches. Developed approaches have been adopted as standard practice globally, making a difference in conservation of these valuable habitats. The long term monitoring studies at Heron and Moreton Bay formed the basis for the development of mapping and monitoring over time and space at local to global scale. See here major research impact
Major projects:
- Long term monitoring of benthic composition at Heron Reef (2002-ongoing).
- Long term monitoring of seagrass composition and abundance in Moreton bay Marine Park (2000-ongoing).
- Smart Sat CRC Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Seagrass and Coral Reefs 2023-2027.
- Developement of Underwater Field Spectrometry and Benthic Photo Collection and Analysis
- 3D GBR Habitat Mapping Project 2015 - ongoing:
- Global habitat mapping project 2019-2023 Allen Coral Atlas .
Current position: Associate Professior in Marine Remote Sensing leading the Marine Ecosystem Monitoring Lab. . Academic Director Heron Island Research Station and affiliated researchers with Centre for Marine Science and Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science
Capacity Building and Citizen Science: Capacity: under/post graduate courses; Msc/PhD supervision, workshops/courses; Remote Sensing Educational Toolkit, and online courses (e.g. TNC).Strong supporter of citizen science based projects, as trainer, organiser and advisor for Reef Check Australia, CoralWatch, Great Reef Census and UniDive.